Sunday, 15 June 2008

Dulux Paintpod Review - It really Sucks!!!

Problem: When you squeeze the trigger, the motor turns the rachet at 'B', this will then turn the rachet at the top of the tube, point 'A'. This should generate sufficient suction to draw the paint into the tube at point 'C', and all the way up the tube into the clear plastic tube and all the way to the roller.

Well in practice the paint never made it as far as the clear plastic tube.

Sounds great when you see the ads on TV.

Bought one. Got it home. Set it up. Pressed the button to start painting....

Nothing! Absolutely nothing! You can hear the motor running, but no paint is making its way up the tube to the roller.

Put Simply "IT DOES NOT WORK !!!". It is a 70 quid piece of crap.

The working part is the tube that you slip into the paint pod. Unfortunately, it is NOT powerful enough to suck the paint up the tube.

The paint pod really sucks. The colour choice is really pathetic and they charge you an arm and a leg for the specially formulated paint.

Save yourself time and money and stick with normal paint and a manual roller.

It is going back to B & Q tomorrow.

It has cost me my time, I did not get my room painted this weekend, and it will cost me a couple of gallons of petrol to take it back. Petrol is not cheap these days either. The extra money I am spending on the petrol would have paid for the normal paint that I would have used to paint the room in the first place.

13 comments:

We have got the same problem too. Dulux Paintpod really does suck - and not in a good way. The first one did not pump the paint so we took it back to B&Q for an exchange. The second one had the same problem. B&Q are refusing to refund it. Please avoid the product at all costs.

The first Paintpod I bought did not work. However, I took it back to B&Q and they gave me a replacement straight away - they said they have had some returned which do not 'prime'. The replacement has worked fine. It has saved us quite a bit of time and it uses much less paint than we would have used with the normal method. It is not so good at cleaning the roller sleave, though. That, and the edging brush and pot I had to wash by hand. Overall, I am quite pleased with it.

We had the same problem too. Two weekends spent trying to get it to work - we tried two different machines, two dip tubes, two batteries, two different pots of paint. Still no joy. We phoned Dulux who said they had had 'quite a few queries about this'(!) They advised cleaning the machine out, placing the machine higher than the tube, and also vigorously stirring the paint before use. We did all this. Still no joy. By this time we could have painted the room twice with a small paint brush. We returned the paintpod to Homebase and had a big row with the customer services person who said it was out of their 28 day refund time (it would be after all that time trying to get it to work) and they'd only exchange it. Nooooo! I don't want to see another PaintPod in my life. The manager was much more helpful, and pointed out that Dulux have a 1 year guarantee on it. He gave a refund and said HE would get the money back from Dulux under their guarantee. It might be worth trying this yourself, by getting in touch with Dulux.

Well I gotta say that mine does suck, in the right way. The girlfriend bought it and started thej ob and then handed it over to me to finish. I bought the extra reach handle, which it could be improved upon, works well and made it a bit easier. I'm happy with the whole setup and while there is a knack to knowing when you have enough paint on the roller, it's a pretty good system.

I get frustrated by the speed of the pod. Also by how much effort you actually have to put in to get a nice even spread - it doesn't seem to come out equally around the roller sleeve.

I am utterly convinced I can paint a wall fast without (& have indeed resorted to "regular" rollers on walls since getting it)....

....but equally I would say that the Paintpod does go very efficiently on the paint, *and* leaves no splatter at all. So having had all our ceilings skimmed last year, I plan to continue to slowly do those using the paintpod. Although the sleeves, so beautifully cleaned, don't hold up well sitting around not being used: I did one VERY large room (3.2m high ceilings - it helped a LOT !) last summer, and that sleeve just didn't hold the paint this past weekend, had to buy another....although at £3 in B&Q, not bad price.

So my advice to others would be to NOT bother, to be honest. I'm wavering on sticking mine on fleabay !!!

It really frustrates me to read about people who have accepted being told "we will only offer an exchange" or "it's past 30 days". It is absolute rubbish.

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS AND THE LAW THAT PROTECTS YOU!

The LAW states:(Sale of Goods Act 1979)"Wherever goods are bought they must "conform to contract". This means they must be as described, fit for purpose and of satisfactory quality (i.e. not inherently faulty at the time of sale)."

This applies up to SIX YEARS after purchase. After 6 months, you need to prove the fault was present at time of purchase. Before that, the onus is on the retailer. Note: The RETAILER, not the manufacturer.

I have just returned my THIRD PaintPod to B&Q, on the first one the lock for holding in the dip tube would not open, I had just undercoated the sittingroom, so I wanted to clean the PaintPod before continuing painting, which was made impposible as the dip tube would not come out, I brought that one back, which was replaced with no quibble. The second one had the exact same problem as the first, except on this one the lifting handle didn't work either, making things very awkward, that was also brought back and replaced. While on the third one, the button on the handle for releasing paint fell off, rendering the whole Paintpod useless, also when I opened up the handle the inside of it was clogged up with paint, to add insult to injury, the roller then fell off its bracket, at this point I lost patience and demanded a refund, which was given to be by the courteous staff in B&Q, who have said it may have been a faulty batch, but it has caused me great distress. DON'T BUY ONE!!!PS: I painted the whole hall, stairs and landing in less than a day using a roller that cost me €6, a fraction of the price of a PaintPod

Reading the comments people will criticise any thing but themselves or just unlucky.the paintpod is wierd at first but efficient clean and consistent finish on walls. lots of paint left unbelievably efficient. should think excellent for enormous rooms.

I bought two paint pods to paint the entire house (walls and ceilings), along with 8 pots of paint. First unit would not pump the paint to the roller. The small gear in the head which turns the paint pump was spinning, but stalled under light pressure from a finger. Returned to B+Q. Second unit pumped paint up to about 10cm along the tube and then gave up. However, will quite happily pump water in its cleaning cycle all day. This indicates to me that the paint is too viscous for the unit and there either is a fault in the pod, or the paint. Returned to B+Q for a refund and now using roller and tray...

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